6 Lessons I Learned From a 32-Year-Old CEO That Changed My Life
What we can learn from canva
Melanie Perkins was just a teenager when she started her first venture, selling and creating handmade scarves in her hometown in Perth, Australia. Her driving force was the freedom and excitement starting up a business from the ground up provided.
Little did she know that this driving force would metamorphose into a billion-dollar idea.
In 2007, Perkins, while teaching some of her colleague’s fundamental computing, as part of her communication and commerce studies at the University of Western Australia, had a brilliant idea.
“How can I make designs on the computer with relative ease?” she asked herself.
Perkins tested this idea by setting up an online system for schools to design their yearbooks, called Fusion Books.
Fusion Books is now the largest yearbook publisher in Australia.
2012 saw the launch of the big one.
Canva was founded in Sydney, Australia by Melanie Perkins, her boyfriend (now fiance), Cliff Obrecht, and ex-Google employee, Cameron Adams on January 1, 2012.
Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create presentations, documents, posters, social media graphics, and other visual content.
On Canva, users can choose from a huge catalog of professional design templates or upload their own photos through a drag and drop interface.
The platform is basically free to use, but also offers paid subscriptions like Canva pro and Canva for Enterprise.
With 20 million-plus users across 190 countries and 1,157 employees, Canva in June 2020 raised $60 million at a valuation of $6 billion.
As with every big business today, there was a time when Canva was just an idea. But with Melanie as CEO, Canva has never stopped growing.
“Throughout my life, I’ve always put a lot of effort into any single thing that I did.” – Melanie Perkins
While watching some of her interviews and reading articles about her and how she started her business, I couldn’t help but notice these 6 lessons that really changed my perspective about starting a business from the ground up.
Let’s get to them.
Perseverance
Wait! Before you throw this aside as mere cliche, I want you to ask yourself this question.
How long have you been doing the business you’re currently in?
The truth is that we hear about perseverance and persistence in business, but only a few of us actually persist.
We like the shiny object syndrome a lot. If what we are doing right now is not giving us the big bucks, we immediately quit.
Like me – I quit my print on demand business after two weeks of starting. Lol.
During the early days of Canva, Perkins was denied funding from a lot of investors(100 plus investors as they say), but she never quit. She persisted until she found one that made all the difference for her business.
If you are passionate about what you are currently doing, stay true to it, persist, and in the end, it will be worth it.
Always Collaborate
We’ve heard of this statement before:
“No Man is an island.”
Well, the truth is that ideas are like seeds. A seed no matter how good, will never grow into a tree if things like the right soil, the right amount of water, and sunlight are absent.
You and your ideas are seeds and your team comprises every other thing needed to make your seeds grow.
You don’t know everything, and that’s okay. But with the right people in your team, you will grow a lot faster.
For Perkins, collaboration has always been her thing. She teamed up with her boyfriend for Fusion Books which later grew up and became Canva, and since then their team has continued to grow.
So when should you collaborate?
Well, I’ll say at the start.
Look at it this way. When do you start to water your seeds? From the moment you plant it right? Yes. So the earlier you start the better. Look for people that believe in what you believe and are ready to work with you.
“You make a lot of money when you give others the opportunity to make a lot of money- Anonymous.”
Make Your Products Easy to Use
The idea for Canva came when Perkins saw how difficult it was to make designs on a computer. So she set out to create a platform that solves this problem.
Canva, compared to other platforms, is relatively easy to use. For those with little or no design experience, this is a huge deal.
Yes, I know Canva is free for the most part, but not all free platforms are easy to use.
Free is good but free and easy to use is always better.
“It is important to always put the user first, their needs, and what they look for. It’s a process that we must continue to learn as our business evolves.”- Melanie Perkins
Stay True to Your Mission
When a business expands, it becomes extremely difficult to maintain its core values.
Core values and mission is the foundation of your business.
It is what you translate to every aspect of your business.
Simon Sinek in his great book, Start With Why, calls it “Your Why.”
This is not a difficult thing to uncover, but with time, as the business expands, it becomes extremely difficult to maintain.
Sinek says this is what separates a successful business from the others.
“Successful businesses have a way of maintaining their why”- Simon Sinek (paraphrased)
The mission for Canva has always been to empower the world to create designs with ease, and that is what they’ve continued to do.
Timing
Let me ask you a question.
When is the right time to start an online business?
For me, I’ll say 10 years ago. But the second-best time to start would be right now.
With the barrier of entry reducing by the day, anyone with a great idea can easily start an online business, leveraging social media or paid advertising for marketing, and start getting sales.
Although this is not as easy as it seems. But compared to the traditional business model, it is a lot easier.
For Canva, its timing was perfect. Canva came at a time were Twitter and Instagram were altering how businesses get to customers. Before you know it, everyone suddenly cared a lot about their online presence and Canva became the easiest way to establish one.
Constant Learning Mindset
Starting up a business today can be a daunting task. You have to take so many things into consideration. If you always have the mindset of constant learning you will go far.
Yuval Noah Harari, in his book Sapience: A Brief History of Humankind, noted that:
“The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.”
Having this mindset in business opens the gateway for innovation and progress.
Going for seminars or reading great books can be one of the ways of getting to know more about your business.
The Canva CEO in one of her interviews said that she learned how to create online experiences that people find easy, intuitive, and enjoyable to use from reading a book called Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman.
So, the attitude of constant learning has a huge role to play for you and your business.
Final Thoughts
Although all have not been rosy for Canva as a business, for the Canva CEO it’s still a learning process that never stops as design continues to evolve.
Well, for me it just goes to show that:
“You don’t need to know how to run a business before you start one.”
